[Funding alert] Fintech Startup BharatX raises $4.5 mn From Y Combinator, others

Fintech startup BharatX has raised $4.5 million in its seed funding round from Y Combinator, 8i Ventures, Multiply Ventures and Soma Capital.

The round also saw participation from existing investor Java Capital along with new angel investors like Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar(Razorpay), Kunal Shah (CRED), Varun Alagh ( Mamaearth), Ankur Aggarwal (Dunzo) and Vikas Choudhury (Jio).

The fintech platform plans to use the new funds to build and expand its team, work on its product, and expand its footprint.

It aims to enhance the credit stack on offer by launching new product verticals like UPI Credit, Pay in 3 and 15/30 day cycle products like credit cards.

The Bengaluru-based BharatX was founded in 2019 by Mehul Nath Jindal, Eeshan Sharma, Siddharth Venu and Shyam Murugan, It is a consumer credit venture, provides embedded credit by partnering with brands and websites to provide credit facilities in its app to serve the customers.

It operates the white-label Buy Now Pay Later which was launched in 2020 and other credit products through its API and SDK on more than 50 consumer-facing platforms.

“Our B2B2C business model enables us to not only win trust of users via the brand power of players we work with, but also enable us to reach to millions of users at Scale with almost Zero Cost.And with this new round of support from our investors, we’re looking to scale up faster and more aggressively in the near future”, said, Mehul Jindal, Co-Founder and CEO, BharatX.

The company aims to provide seamless embedded credit experiences across multiple consumer-facing platforms across India, partnering with brands with zero credit risk and zero operational hassles.

Vikram Chachra, Founding Partner, 8i Ventures, said, “We committed to invest in the Seed round of BharatX within our first meeting with the founders.”

“In a short time, Mehul and the BharatX team made the “buy now, pay later” experience seamless and instantaneous for both brands and consumers”, said, Arash Ferdowsi, Co-founder, Dropbox.

About 480 million Indians currently do not have access to credit due to lack of documentation, high interest rates and inadequate supply of credit in the informal sector.

According to BharatX, there is a $1 Tn credit gap in the Indian middle class and less than 3% of India’s people have credit cards to make purchases using credit.

BharatX plans to reach 100K users in 2022 and create a $10 billion loan book by 2025. In December 2021, BharatX had raised $250k in a pre-seed funding round.

About BharatX

BharatX is a VC Backed early-stage FinTech startup that uses technology to empower the Indian Middle Class with credit. Approximately 110 Million Households whose income is more than 5 lakh per annum, do not get access to Formal Credit.

BharatX wants to change that by enabling Credit-as-a-Feature on Consumer-facing apps! Their access to data allows them to innovate with products that remove barriers and lowers costs at the same time. They are changing the way credit is made available to the Indian middle class.